1. Field of the Description
The present description relates, in general, to amusement park rides and other entertainment rides such as round rides, and, more particularly, to amusement or theme park rides configured to provide passengers with ride experiences including riders or passengers of each vehicle being able to trigger a vertical impulse, e.g., to uniquely control or at least initiate a vehicle motion profile that may provide jumping or bouncing sensations for passengers of the vehicle at the end of each boom or support arm.
2. Relevant Background
Amusement and theme parks are popular worldwide with hundreds of millions of people visiting the parks each year. Park operators continuously seek new designs for rides that attract and continue to entertain guests. Many parks include round rides that include vehicles or gondolas mounted on support arms extending outward from a centrally located drive or rotation assembly. The passengers or riders sit in the vehicles and are rotated in a circle about the drive assembly, which spins about its central axis. In some of these rides, the guests may operate an interactive device, such as a joystick in the vehicle, to make the support arm and their attached vehicle gradually move upward or downward. Some rides also allow the guests to control the pitch of their vehicle.
While these rides are popular with younger children, these rides are typically not considered an exciting ride that appeals to older guests as the rides often rotate at less than 10 revolutions per minute (RPM) and provide less sophisticated mental stimulation. When designing new rides, park operators have a great amount of freedom to develop rides with very different configurations such as roller coasters and the like that allow the guests to travel at high speeds and experience high accelerations as their vehicles travel around corners and dips. However, park operators face a different challenge when they attempt to refurbish or modify an existing round ride to create a new ride that will appeal to older guests as well as to younger guests. Typically, existing round rides are closely integrated into an area and are surrounded by other elements (e.g., other rides, landscaping, facilities, kiosks, and so on). Therefore, a design challenge is to provide a ride that appeals to older guests within the space currently occupied by the round ride that it is being designed to replace. Even more attractive to the park operator would be a ride configuration that made use of at least some of the original ride components such as the circular drive assembly as this significantly reduces start up costs and allows continued use of a proven drive system.
While existing round rides provide a general soaring or flying experience, the relatively low rotation rate and “generic” or overly predictable experience have been significant barriers to the variability of thrill or excitement that could be provided with a ride based on a round iron ride design. As a consequence, park operators desire a more exciting ride that retains the simplicity, affordability, and appeal for multi-arm rotating rides while increasing passenger enjoyment for all ages such as by increasing the thrill-factor and/or by improving passenger interactivity.